Gender and Mr. Mister

Gender is pretty hard for me to talk about. I view gender as a deeply personal construction that I actively have to think about at times to effectively execute out in the world. It isn’t something I enjoy discussing, as it’s not an area of my life that is really up for debate or dissection, except when it is.

My personal gender is both complex and simple. I dislike nearly every label I’ve come across, except for one. I like the term transmasculine because it stays away from one static label and let’s me play with the meaning, which is important to me. Transmasculine, to me, means that I present as masculine [except when I don’t—more on that in a minute] but that my masculinity is a journey or a spectrum. Specifically for me, my masculinity is sometimes in conflict with my body, which is undeniably female. I mostly wear men’s clothing [except when I don’t] and I use male pronouns in all situations where it would not cause more trouble than it’s worth—school, work, and my biological family are my only exceptions, mostly.

But that’s not where it ends. According to Mr. Mister, I don’t get to sit in one place. I have to fuck my gender and that is not always as fun as it sounds. This is where it gets really hard for me to talk about.

I am mostly okay with femininity. I don’t feel threatened by it except for when it’s used as a means to try and disprove or dismantle my transmasculine identity. In a lot of gender communities and gender spaces, this is not okay. It’s not okay with lots of people that I occasionally will run around in kink spaces in girly underwear because it makes me feel good. It’s not okay that I will do girl drag on occasion because it makes me feel good and makes me feel sexy. The prevailing attitude seems to be that I have to pick one or the other.

I’m not so good with those kind of ‘rules’ and I never have been. I take pleasure in quietly providing, sometimes by my very existence, an opportunity for others to dismantle their preconceived notions of gender and expressions of such—and that goes doubly for other trans people. I don’t think that I, or anyone else, should be bound by some kind of fucked-up expectation or gender role that we don’t explicitly pick for ourselves.

With all that in mind, I have learned via Mr. Mister that my gender is a tool for the Work, that it does not strictly belong to me and I do not get to hide my proverbial little light under a big, encompassing bushel. I have to be visible and I have to use my gender as the tool He has deemed it, even when I hate it and even when it hurts. I think sometimes people assume that people who transgress gender are all okay with being out loud about it and are happy to answer your questions and educate you. Sometimes it is exactly what I’ve explained it as; a Job that I am assigned to do and so I do it, regardless of how I personally feel about it.

What has been most challenging about all of this is that I have made the decision over and over again not to change or alter my body via surgery, hormones, or other medical intervention. This, in some ways, is at odds with what I see reflected in the larger transmasculine and FTM [female-to-male] communities. It seems to be an expectation that I will someday come around to the idea of a physical transition, but I can say that I likely will not. Not only is that my decision, but it is Mr. Mister’s desire as well. My body is an intrinsic part of the Work. Since I only date and fuck queer and/or gay men, I raise questions of attraction and sexuality because it can take quite a lot of mental gymnastics to suddenly realize, after years of chasing dick, that you are suddenly taken with someone who has tits and a cunt and is making no overtures to change that.

Also unpopular is my experience that my gender is intrinsically linked to my sexuality. A large part of the trans* experience is explaining that gender does not determine attraction or sexuality but, for me and I suspect others, this couldn’t be further from the truth. My gender makes me queer and queers my sexuality. If my gender was not as it is, I would likely have sex with straight men but, as a queer masculine person, having sex with a straight man invalidates my identity—it reinforces that my biology is destiny, when that couldn’t be further to the truth.

It’s a sticky topic with lots of different sides, but it doesn’t end there.

My gender also is an important part of my relationship with Mr. Mister. Not only are we in a Daddy/boy relationship [which I swear I will write about soon] but we are a male/male pairing. This is interesting to me because I have met one male-identified person who is in a sexual relationship with a male God. What I see is a lot of presumed heterosexuality, either with female-id’ed devotees and male Gods or male-id’ed devotees and female Goddesses. That’s not to say that this is bad—it is what it is—but, as someone who doesn’t fit that mold, it can be rather daunting to deal with, as there is not a lot of writing or community around that.

It also isn’t a representative sample, either. I have it on good authority from Boyfriend that his blog gets tons of hits with the search terms ‘male Loki consort’ and the like, which means there are individuals out there who aren’t finding what they need. Part of my Job, I’ve learned, is to be visible as an alternative to the assumed heterosexuality of deity relationships. Our relationship is queer at base and Mr. Mister is definitely a queer God.

His gender is also interesting, as I get the distinct feeling that, underneath the male exterior that I see/feel, there is something agendered. I haven’t seen it often and He hasn’t given me any explanation further than ‘that’s Who I am’. Boyfriend posits that we, as meatsacks with meat brains, need to see the Gods in human terms, which often means assigning them a gender. I can think of a very small handful of Deities/Spirits that don’t fit that, but it’s small. I don’t have a lot of insight on His gender to share, other than that I know there is a part of Him that exists as ‘other’ and maybe even a feminine representation of Him.

So that’s the gender question. Tied into that question is the Daddy/boy stuff, which I will try to make my next post—what is a Daddy/boy relationship and how that differs from a spouse or a consort.

If you are a non-traditionally gendered individual who has a relationship with a Deity/Spirit/Power or you are a male-identified person who has a relationship with a male God, I’d love to hear from you! Feel free to comment here or email me at alex.bettencourt at gmail.